A biopolitical dirty movie exposes, interrogates, and deconstructs the dynamics of cinema by highlighting mechanisms of control, exclusion, and resistance. These films not only reflect how bodies and populations are monitored and managed but – most importantly explore the paradoxes, cracks, and fissures of the society of control. Employing raw aesthetics, visceral imagery, and gritty narratives – when compared to more polished cinema – they capture the precariousness of existence under the technologies of power. From 2004 onward, each selected title breathes resistance, portraying lives that confront micropowers and the society of control.

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Iranian cinema emerged as one of the most sophisticated cinema movements in the world during the 1960s. It quickly established its own identity, challenging both narrative conventions and political restrictions. Pioneers Ebrahim Golestan explored social issues with a neorealist gaze, in The Brick and the Mirror (1965). Feminist poetess Forugh Farrokhzad revolutionised the documentary form by portraying life in a leper colony, in The House is Black (1963). Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cow (1969) anticipated the minimalist aesthetic of contemporary Iranian cinema.

Later, Bahram Beyzai (The Stranger and the Fog, 1974), Mohsen Makhmalbaf (The Cyclist, 1969), Jafar Panahi (The White Balloon, 1995), Asghar Farhadi (Dancing in the Dust, 2003) and other s helped to consolidate the movement, thus allowing Iranian cinema to claim a permanent spot in the pantheon of world cinema. Unlike classical Iranian cinema, which often dealt with myths and epic narratives, this New Wave delved into everyday life and the complexity of human relationships, particularly under an authoritarian regime. The machinations of tyranny became more discernible after the 1979 Revolution.

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Regulation of the body

A Separation (Asghar Farhadi, 2011) belongs to the Third Wave of Iranian New Wave, and it is one of the last films to be included in the movement that started five decades earlier. The then 38-year-old director created a family drama dissecting the workings of biopower and state surveillance. The film begins with a couple in front of the judge: Simin (Leila Hatami) wants to leave Iran in order to offer a better life to their daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi), while Nader (Peyman Moaadi) refuses to leave because he feels responsible for his elderly father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s. This decision is not just a marital one but a also political one. From this first moment, Farhadi places us in front of a system where freedom is not an inalienable right but a privilege negotiated within a network of norms, expectations, and invisible coercions.

Michel Foucault, in Discipline and Punish (1975), argues that modern power operates not just through direct repression but through the disciplining of bodies and the conditioning of daily gestures. In History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge (1976), he introduces the concept of biopolitics, describing how states manage not only territories but the very biological life of individuals. In A Separation, this logic manifests in the way each choice – whether to stay or leave, whether to tell the truth or hide, whether to accuse or protect – is intersected by a system of social and state surveillance.

The entry of Razieh (Sareh Bayat) into the plot adds another layer to the drama. From a humble and deeply religious background, Razieh agrees to work in Nader’s home, but faces dilemmas of faith and survival. By hesitating to touch the elderly man without the permission of a cleric, hiding her pregnancy, and considering suing Nader for assault, she becomes an emblem of biopower in action: her life is regulated not only by economic needs but by religious and patriarchal codes that limit her actions.

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Freedom is an illusion

The court, the central space of the narrative, is presented by Farhadi not as a place of justice but as a mechanism of control. In the opening frame, the camera takes the perspective of the judge, positioning the viewer in a position of power. This institutional gaze permeates the entire film, reinforcing the idea that truth is not an absolute, but instead a construct determined by social hierarchies.

Farhadi’s aesthetic reinforces this sense of constant surveillance. The camera, always restless, moves as if it is investigating the characters. The editing avoids excessive dramatisation, favouring long takes that capture small gestures and silences filled with tension. There are no melodramatic devices. The narrative arc is built upon the banality of everyday conflicts.

Time, another crucial element of biopower, also appears as a form of control. Whether through procedural deadlines, the counting of Termeh’s school grades, or the invisible ticking clock that conditions the characters’ decisions, Farhadi suggests that no one is truly free to choose – each decision is already restrained by greater forces.

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Perpetual mechanisms

The final denouement is extremely impactful. When Termeh is called to choose between her mother and father, Farhadi’s camera denies us her response. The titular separation does not end, instead it perpetuates itself in a state of suspension. This ending not only breaks with the traditional logic of melodrama but underscores the film’s central message: within structures of power, individual choice is always mediated by mechanisms that operate beyond the perception of the subjected.

This landmark of Iranian and world cinema – which became the first Iranian film in history to win an Academy Award – boasted a formal excellence but and also an ability to translate local issues into universal reflections. Like a mirror reflecting the workings of biopower, the film reminds us that, in any society, freedom is never irrevocable. There is always a negotiation, a contested space where norms, laws, and expectations determine who can leave, who must stay, and who has the right to be heard.